“I don’t envy the curators at Tate Modern, whose job it is to present art from 80 or 100 years ago next to the art of today. It’s hard to juxtapose the very new with the overfamiliar – hard to set the violent originality of Léger alongside the tired formulae of Gary Hume or Fiona Rae. And yet that is what the museum does.”
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Metal Detectors And Archaeologists Make Truce
“While amateur users of metal detectors have made some of the most spectacular archaeological finds of recent years, many archaeologists have regarded them as little better than hobby looters. Now, after months of negotiation, the two sides are set to announce a code of conduct. The code, which will be launched at the British Museum today, has been agreed by all the main metal detector clubs, landowners, archaeologists, museums, archaeological societies and English Heritage.”
Time To Bash “Last Night Of The Proms” Again
“The Last Night has never been just about the music; in fact, it’s mostly about everything but the pieces the BBC Symphony Orchestra gamely tries to play through a chorus of klaxons, whistles, and toe-curling audience participation. The first half of the Last Night is traditionally a conventional concert in miniature, a minor inconvenience tolerated by the audience in the hall before the bombastic beanfeast of the second half. It’s the rituals of that second half that have defined a sense of British – or rather, English – patriotism that often curdles into jingoism, with tub-thumping renditions of Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory, and Rule, Britannia.”
Their Message – At Work (Subliminally)
“Researchers have shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote a brand can be made to work.” And the cumulative effect of ads builds up in our brains. “Earlier this month, the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine published a report showing that for each additional hour per day that a child watched television an average of one additional request was made for an advertised product. The effect of the commercials on children lasted up to 20 weeks.”
In A Webby World Is There Such A Thing As A Subculture?
As “personal technology creeps deeper into our lives, the gaps narrow – between the daring and the dilettantes, between the rebels and the ready-for-prime-time, between making donations at the door and being on hold with Ticketmaster. We’re all online. The Web’s no longer a fringe medium. The individualists have been blogged, kicking and screaming, into the open. Some artists have traded their obscurity for practical considerations – like survival, and a wider audience. Some have sacrificed their avant-garde cachet for cash. With the so-called underground only a log-on or a picture-phone image away, is it dead, or has it just, inevitably, changed with the times?”
Out Of The Ashes Of Triumph, Coconut Grove Director Struggles To Survive
Arnold Mittelman has run Florida’s Cocnut Grove Playhouse for 21 years. “On April 10, South Florida’s theater community paid homage to the 61-year-old stage veteran. Standing tall in the spotlight at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Mittelman, his blue eyes sparkling, accepted the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. By the next morning, though, a very different kind of spotlight began to shine on Mittelman amid revelations that the landmark theater he has run with a single-minded determination is on the brink of ruin.”
Will Smoking On A British Stage Be The New Nudity?
The English ban on smoking could after plays onstage. “For example, do almost all Ibsen’s male characters smoke because it is central to the argument of the drama or because Ibsen was a social realist and, at the time, being in a room after dinner was like walking alongside a steam train? Under the Finch rules, smoking might become for future generations of actors equivalent to nudity in the past, with respectful reference to performers who were ‘prepared to light up’ but only ‘if the part absolutely demanded it’.”
Have You Gone Viral Yet? (Everyone’s Doing It)
“The viral is where words, spoof images or film clips, You’ve Been Framed moments, guerilla marketing, cultural subversion and the unsuspecting celebrity all meet – and get spread around the internet community through personal contact. Once it would be nothing more than a text-only joke but, with broadband nearly everywhere and editing software ever more sophisticated, so virals have upped the stakes. The viral email has become such a phenomenon that the ICA is hosting the first exhibition devoted to it…”
Ballet Pacifica Exodus Continues
The Southern California company is losing its troops piece by piece. “Husband and wife John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow, former dancers with American Ballet Theatre, will leave their administrative posts with the Irvine-based company when their contracts are up at the end of July.”
The Insidious Side Of Book “Packagers”
“What is new is the way the packaging operations dovetail so neatly with the values of the sprawling corporations that now control the publication of most books in America. It can come as no shock to anyone that they believe in marketing and the bottom line over and above everything else. When it comes to books for young readers, the result — in the overwhelming majority of cases — is a focus-group-driven literature of solipsism, which most children and adolescents ignore as bleak and inauthentic, despite all its calculated relevance.”